Behind the scenes in Detroit business

Meyer ouster makes for awkward OCC commencement speech

Awhile back, Tim Meyer, chancellor of Oakland Community College and its five campuses, invited me to be the commencement speaker on May 20.

Two days before the big day, I learned through our own story on crainsdetroit.com that Meyer had been removed as chancellor and an interim was appointed.

Can you say "awkward"?

I accepted Meyer's invitation because I have long admired how he has moved OCC forward to be one of the top workforce assets in our region, responding to some of employers' greatest needs.

But that work often ran afoul of the faculty union at OCC; members took a no-confidence vote against him in 2014. But the board of trustees had his back — until new elections that fall and in 2016 shook up the makeup of that body.

And on May 16, the board voted 5-1 to put Meyer on administrative leave, news reports said. But for all practical purposes, they fired him. And as Crain's Detroit Business'Kirk Pinho reported, Meyer promptly hired a D.C. lawyer with higher ed experience to represent him.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson was a fan of Meyer's, largely because of OCC's ability to nimbly address workforce training needs for county employers. Patterson laid the blame on Meyer's ouster squarely on board chairman John McCulloch, whose own political history has had ups and downs in the county.

Meyer had a remarkable run at a tax-supported institution that once had a revolving door of chancellors. The churn and a lack of professionalism on the board at one time endangered the college's accreditation.

Accreditation will be coming up again. So will a millage renewal. So it will be interesting to see if Meyer's legacy is dismantled to the point that employers' support for the school wanes.

It wasn't easy to follow through on the commitment to speak Saturday. One option — to call out the board for an action I don't agree with. But the graduates were probably oblivious to the drama playing out at the administrative level. Ironically, my message to grads was to start exercising a healthy dose of skepticism — asking more questions of potentially "fake news" circulating on the internet, especially shared on social media.

I guess the same kind of skepticism can apply to the press releases and statements coming from the OCC board.